River Time

My favorite day is back, Friday!!! This friday we introduced the new group of volunteers to field trip day for the prison kids. We took Steve, Shyama and Sarah along with the old volunteers of Natalie, Laura and Millie to the river with the kids. We had tons of kids this week! Finding the free stuff to do around the city with the kids is getting a little harder. This week we decided to take them to the river by the prison. At the river we let them throw rocks into the water. I was a little worried about this activity, I have spent everyday at the Cuna telling the kids that they can not hit, bite or throw things at each other. To not regress after this field-trip I gave the kids a very intense talk about how they can only throw rocks into the river. I am glad to report that it worked. We didn't have too many incidents, the ones that we did we stopped before the rock left their hands.

We spent time playing with the water, talking about what a river was, playing chasing games

and eating our snack. I also took the opportunity to become truly Peruvian. I carried one of my kids in a manta. I was so scared that he was going to fall out I never took my hands out

from under his bottom. The way the manta works is it is a thick blanket, more or less, that doubles as the carryall backpack. The people here use it to carry everything from firewood to newborn babies. Beatrice, the cleaner, gave me a lesson on how to use a manta. I learned how to put a kid on my back, transfer it to the front if it is a newborn and needs to be feed, hang them in a tree, etc. I put my new knowledge to the test and put o

ur chronic crier, Jherson, in a manta to test it out. The manta calmed him down and he was chillin' like a villain, but then I felt bad he wasn't playing in the river so I took him out. Oh that didn't set well with him at all. After a few minutes out of the manta he was fine again and playing with the other kids.